JANUARY

Saturday, 8th January

Wet, wild, windy and more wet. Everywhere has become a watery experience from the squelch underfoot to the running rivulets winding along roads,  carving tracks down gravel paths, pouring out of fields and laying still and silvery in the moonlight filled fields. Even seagulls and ducks are foraging in the newly created lakes and ponds confused by this watery world.

And Grey! More than fifty shades, of tone and texture. But always grey in essence. Rain - filled clouds of steely grey lying so low they  bear down upon your head. Processions of them marching over the sky gathering in intensity  size and power delivering their cargo with fierce intent in magnificent cloudbursts of staccato intensity.

 Then just when the endless grey seems to have closed down the horizon , a vast sheet of intense orange was pulled across the sky outlining the hills of the West Wight.  Ancient coppiced oaks stood silhouetted against the vermillion backdrop in all their naked splendour, giant bonsais! Hedgerows lined like barbed-wire barriers across fields reveal the minute detail of their chainlike branches, locked together in unity against the weather. Waiting, waiting for the Spring to arrive. 

Rooks, my favourite winter birds, take up the signal. Creeling and cawing to one another as they race for their roosts, black punctuation marks scrawling their words over this scarlet page in a flurry of tumbling flight.